Three Easy Ways to Improve Your Squarespace Website's SEO

Squarespace's SEO maze got you down?

It's true, Squarespace search engine optimization isn't as transparent as the plugins such as Yoast that we can use in Wordpress, but the system is still built for search friendliness! We help clients improve their search juice all the time, and over the years, I've learned a thing or two about how to help your site be found by your target audience.

Here are a few tips you may have missed along the way that can help beef up your search engine presence.

1. Internal Links Are Powerful

A lot of SEO guides focus on building external backlinks, but there's a secret that a lot of people don't know about: You can get almost as much--or as much--of an SEO boost from internally linking on your own site. A good guide is 2 - 3 links to related content on your own site will likely have as much meat as a backlink from a blog guest post. (Also, the spammy directories you can pay to link to you? Those will likely hurt your rankings.)

I see this as additional motivation to organize your content. Know what's on your site and how it's all connected. Even blog posts can be punched up with links to other posts that are relevant.

2. Work Your Target Keyword into the Page Title, URL and Header 1

Now this is dead simple. Identify your target keyword(s). (In the case of this post I'm targeting Squarespace SEO). Then, make sure it's integrated into your URL (ie, sarahmoon.net/blog/easy-squarespace-seo-tips) and the Heading 1 (in Squarespace, blog post titles are H1s, so that would be "Three Easy Ways to Improve Your Squarespace Website's SEO").

Easy-peasy, right? Now keep in mind to make sure the verbiage makes sense in context, you don't want to have an H1 that's just a string of keywords--that's no good for anyone!

3. Embrace Micro-Moments!

Kath, who works with me and other Squarespace designers, is a real wiz at this. The concept of micro-moments is really simple. What are your customers/clients asking about during these tiny moments in their lives?

Your customers/clients are asking themselves "I want to know" "I want to do" "I want to buy" "I want to go" questions all the time. They pick up their phones and they Google. Think about how you can be there when your audience does this. How can you answer these questions.

Create an editorial calendar that solves customers'/clients' problems and you'll be found, even if your bigger competitors are ranking more highly in general terms. (An example: A realtor who fills their site with general search terms like "houses for sale in Portland" will never be able to beat out the big guys like Zillow and Trulia, but a realtor who targets more niche moments can perform well with a blog post title "5 Portland Homes for Sale Under $300,000.")

What I typically recommend doing if you want to play with optimizing your Squarespace site via micro-moments is creating a list a 3-5 longtail keywords you want to target and brainstorm a list of topics that will serve those keywords. Think about how-tos, tips, secrets, those pieces that you know people are asking for.

This is definitely a lot of work, but once you get a rhythm, it's actually quite easy. Squarespace's blog system makes it dead simple to create post templates, now that you can duplicate them, so there aren't really any excuse not to experiment with this strategy--especially in competitive industries!

(Kath and I have teamed up to offer a done for you service to get you started with micro-moments--reach out if that's of interest to you.)